9/07/2017

New Rep's "Ideation": Survival of the Specious

The presence of a clean whiteboard, often a tool for
problem-solving, portends something ominous, a sort of potential
moral catastrophe, in Ideation, a playby video game
creator Aaron Loeb which premiered off-Broadway in 2016. It's the
season opener for New Rep in Watertown, in its Boston-area premiere.
The title of course refers to the formation of ideas or concepts, in
other words, brainstorming, and that's about all one can disclose
without revealing significant spoilers. Despite some fundamental
confidentiality issues, though, one may at least describe it as a
very dark comedy, as well as a psychological thriller, about a
mysterious Project Senna (for an unnamed client) for which a team of
strategists for an unnamed company must come up with a solution for
a morally ambiguous hypothetical that threatens to tear them asunder.
The team consists of a boss named Hannah (Christine Hamel); Sandeep
(Matt Ketai), a PhD in Industrial Engineering; Brock (Lewis D.
Wheeler) and Ted (Ed Hoopman), both just back from a business trip to
Crete; and Scooter (Jake Murphy), an intern working on his MBA, who
is to take notes (on paper) and whose father is on the Board of
Directors of the company. It's not long before we discover the
verbal roller coaster that this play is, often perilously close to
(intentionally) riding off the rails.

In the first half of the play, the team's ideating
quickly devolves into an ethically disturbing and horrendous
psychological game, replete with corporate-speak, with its depiction
of vague rules of engagement, conspiracy theories, and various rabbit
holes, all percolating in a very terse and tense exercise in
dispassionate logic. In the second half of this intermission-less
work, matters turn more specious, more superficially plausible; the
playwright coined the term “plausiating”, simultaneously
plausible and nauseating. It also becomes increasingly funny, once
the initial horrific nature of the conundrum is dissected. Thanks to
this estimable cast, each seemingly perfect for her or his role, the
audience is “in the room where (and as) it happens”, in real
time. At one point, the only foreign-born member of the team declares
that Americans are “entirely trusting while at the same time being
so profoundly paranoid about the wrong things...just because you're
paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you”. Though the play
was written before our recent elections, it surely has relevance and
resonance, enhanced by the creative elements including striking Scenic Design by
Ryan Bates, carefully chosen Costume Design by Penney Pinette, stark
Lighting Design by Bridget K. Doyle and sinister Sound Design by
Dewey Dellay. The production is scrupulously directed by Jim Petosa,
who notes in the program that we live in times that often require
group-think (sometimes with unexpectedly non-benign results).

At one point, a character describes their dilemma as one
facing a labyrinth, an interesting aside given their just-completed
trip to Crete. Questions arise, some explicitly, some implicitly,
about how far one could go to accomplish a greater good, balancing
one's personal beliefs with a corporation's aims, and fundamentally
whether the end justify the means. It's all about trust (or lack
thereof) and is strongly reminiscent of the famous Twilight Zone
episode, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.

The play is a brilliantly clever conceit, at New Rep
through September 24th, ruthlessly immoral at times yet
hysterically involving and exhausting at others. More could be
revealed, but then one might have to kill you.